Hey, Angry: I think Pat DOES read this blog. In his blunt pre-game interview (which seemed to shock Parker at times) Pat averred that he’s tired of guys inflating their statistics in low-competition out of conference games and disappearing when conference play starts. Parker wanted to tout last weekend’s sweep, including the perfect game, which Pat conceded, but he then allowed he had never seen as bad an offense in all his time in Corvallis. Which, as the anti-Riley, he took responsibility for. This, by the way, Angry, is why so many here love Pat, sometimes to your mystification. I think the reason for that is that we had gotten so tired of the diffuse, if not obtuse, Riley that we find straight talk its own reward, even if we can’t fathom some line up decisions, like Clark and Hamilton, for example.

Well said, wanna, I think your explanation of why so many here love Pat has a lot of merit.
I caught most of the pre-game interview, including his remark that you “have to try” to strike out 15 times in a game and his assertion that he never (except for possibly a 3-0 count) called for a “take”.
I don’t believe there is a podcast of that interview, would be worth checking out if one could be found.

It’s good to see them getting some notice. There were so close against ASU. Those two losses to New Mexico seem to have taken awhile to recover from (poll wise), the Lobos are not looking like a very good team. I hope the Ducks are falling.

Edit: Angry, it looks like they are 11th on this site, 16th last week.

curious–Pat’s commitment to Clark. I guess he’s hoping that he’ll catch fire against low grade Cali opposition and hope to extend it when conference plays resumes. In contrast to Pat’s maneuvers with Hamilton and LF/RF. He must like Hamilton’s defensive play but figures as a second baseman it’s a better investment of time/role; though Hamilton did get the most productive hit of the night.

He sure is, has shown a decent arm behind the plate and nice baserunning as well. I meant that, since he’d been pulled after the 8th that I kinda expected KJ to be given some experience at C. Not down on Lund at all.

quite honestly, I would start Lund over Ice. Nothing against Ice as he is a terrific catcher and he’s tough to steal against but the stats are comparable in fielding. Lund’s upside is he’s a better hitter. three fewer hits than Ice in 24 fewer at bats. I’d take a guy hitting .360 over the .245 guy any day of the week. Thoughts?

I was at the game last night (SJSU 1 of 2). I didn’t benefit from replays, but agree that there were several hard hits to the OF that if were just a few feet in a different direction, would be hits. It was cool and wet and little wind so fly balls weren’t getting much extra pop.

OSU seemed pretty smart in the baserunning dept. Not sure if the double-steal/run-down was planned or luck, but it was heads-up to send the runner at 3B. Also scoring two runs on the fielder’s choice that should have been a 4-6-3 DP if the SS isn’t asleep was aggressive. Getting two near-perfect bunts down.

The bottom of the order did the most damage. Morrison, Harrison, King/Clark were quiet at the plate.

Not Harrison’s day so far. Poor baserunning on a hit and run creates an out at third. On to the 5th inning, Down 0-1.
IMHO not much excuse for not making the first to third trip on a H&R, given where the H went.

Riley never “rules out” anything, it’s just putting it into actual practice is where he falters…..”you know, it’s kind of neat stuff, we’re always looking for ways to get better”. Riley translation….pro style offense until I get sent to the old coaches home….next question.

Well… I ve been saying for years that we should have a Hans Zimmer tune as a lead in for football. So I can’t complain about the music. I still absolutely hate that orange outline and how it completely destroys the negative space on an otherwise nice stencil art.

What was maybe about it? I have to think CR went out of his way to avoid that convo. Otherwise, I think his recruiting would have been better than it was.

He didn’t have to say anything about it because it was known OSU would go see the Prez every year. Maybe he should have pushed his connections just a little bit instead of being cautious. Stupids thought he was pushing it anyway. Why not do it and win?

I do appreciate that CR didn’t use relatives as a direct recruiting tool. In fact, he was almost embarrassed about it, as you and I would be. He wanted to be known as self-sufficient. I would not have made that mistake. I would have brought kids in with all those promises in place. That’s a part of my lot in life and a tool which I can use in recruiting. I will use it despite what dummy on blog.com says. I’m not going to handicap my own job.

If I’m CR, I’m all, “Fuck yes I’ll have the (former) Prez here to watch games many times each season. You can have people coming for the games or the Prez. And the beauty is, you won’t have to pay for security for a whole season. Give me that money in salary. Plus, I’ll raise funds for your school like you’ve never seen them raised. When can I start?”

Are you listening DePaul?

I could be biased in an OSU-doesn’t-need-to-pay-your-buyout kinda way. But I think it’s a good idea regardless.

If I’m an 18 year old kid do I really give two shits whether the president is at some obscure non-conference game back East once a year and I could get a tour of the White House? I think years down the road it’s a nice story to tell, but in the moment there are a lot more important things about a division one basketball program I should be looking at with my family. I think it was very close to being a non-factor.

What if CR planted himself in Chicago and let loose with the, “Prez has season tickets,” line of thought?

I think that works in a town like Chicago, where many very good hoopsters play. If a coach can pull in two of the top five players from that town each and every year, all he has to do as a coach is throw a ball on the court and blow a whistle.

Oh, trust me CR will figure out a way to fuck up the talent, him coaching Kentucky this year would probably be a 7 loss team. Again, I don’t think 18 year olds think that way, who cares if an ex-president is in the stands?

That’s not the argument. You know that’s not the argument. At least, I assume you know that.

If you actually play up the Prez angle instead of shun it, like CR did, then it can play big time in a town like Chicago. This is assuming Obama retires to Chicago. If he does the smart thing and retires to Hawai’i, then all bets are off. And it’s not like I expect a past Prez to be a real human with respect to what sport they might like.

Seeing idiot boy steal land from a profitable business just to build a baseball stadium is proof enough… when you add it to how much he likes the games of the people since he stopped being Prez. If Obama does the same, then I will call him out the same.

CR refused to play it up for his own benefit. I get it. You don’t make promises you can’t keep. But that changes in terms of accessibility once a Prez retires. The stupids were and did (and still do) go all conspiracy nuts over you. So why not just do it anyway? Why not just be the lead on Faux News every night… if they actually had a news show.

Dude! You could get recruits without recruiting just because Faux News tells them you are bad. And they would waste at least 10% of their time talking about you. It’s a boon.

I’m talking fantasy here. CR failed to play on that. He did everything else right except for being irrational. That would have brought players to OSU. We’re thankful to him for that, but we hate him because he didn’t do that. That’s what happens when rational meets reality.

Gotta think Tinkle and Thompson Jr will be moving in the Summer too. Those guys will have a ton of opportunity to play together well before basketball season starts, plus Eubanks lives only 90 minutes away from campus.

If by academically you mean he gets a jump on classes, yeah. He can take 13 or 14 credits of lower division stuff now (your math, health, comm, writing or whatever freshman stuff and an easy bacc core), in addition to the summer classes he can take to get even more free time during basketball season. It does WONDERS when he can take 12 credits during winter term for the APR. Easier to stay eligible and keep making progress towards his degree.

This is where the quarter system works its wonders. Spring term is literally the perfect term to come into school if you’ve already graduated. The weather is fantastic, girls are crawling out from the rocks they’ve been under for a whole term, and he can start with the classes.

Langsdorf on adding the element of a running QB to Riley’s offense. Seriously, he sounds just like Riley. All sorts of “stuff” and “kindof” and “things” in his quotes. Everything is so vague, and hopeful that things will just kindof sortof work themselves out.

“We talk to people we know and people we don’t know and people that are running stuff and look at tape,” Langsdorf said. “A lot of it’s all kind of film study. And then our friends – everybody’s got buddies in different places so you can a lot of times call a guy at a different program and say ‘hey, how are you guys doing this?’

“Sometimes we’ve taken something we’ve done and we research other teams to see how we can improve it. Sometimes we’ve done that and we haven’t found anything better, so we’ve kind of stuck with it,” Langsdorf said.

When Riley wanted to add the sweep game to his offense, the coaching staff leaned heavily on current Montreal Alouettes coach Mark Speck, the longtime head coach at Willamette University. “He was kind of the guru of the fly sweep and that’s how that kind of started,” Langsdorf said.

On whether Nebraska will go no-huddle:

“I’ve got a pretty good feel about that,” he said. “As we get comfortable with what we’re doing, we’ll get playing faster, so we’re not going to throw that at them quite yet, but we will hurry up a bit.”

I’m with you. Given our long tenured frame of reference, this stuff with Riley is priceless. I mean, Langsdorf sounds like Riley, they’ve mind-melded or something. I assume Dee has the retirement home in Hill Country ready to go?

Angry, how did like this comment? Riley is a late bloomer apparently.
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Originally Posted by huskernut
I think we now have a staff who embraces openness and publicity and even the media as an opportunity to improve the program and build on-field success. By itself, it doesn’t win games, but it can help you win in ways that helps you win games.
It is becoming more and more obvious as each day passes that Mike Riley was in the wrong place to be a Head Coach in Corvallis. He may have been comfortable there, but his talent was being wasted because he had no resources to speak of and an administration that was not interested in upgrades. I think we may well be watching the late blooming of Mike Riley. His staff seems excellent.

Yes, it is typical “we need a conclusion [that riley is good] in order to have hope, so let’s create an argument that supports it.” Corvallis becomes the scapegoat. Typical fandome. It’s very irrational.

First is the premise correct? Did he have no resources in Corvallis and an administration not interested in upgrades? Hiring Andersen and committing 50mil to upgrades says otherwise. I think this guy is reaching because he has to.

Those Nebraska linemen are softening by the second. The only way Riley does well is if the team comes together on their own and forms a pact that they will train and mentally prepare outside of Riley’s requirements. That is possible since they have a long history of mental toughness. They’re probably puzzled by Riley and might reject him/form their own routine. I expect the teams to become softer the longer Riley is there.

I guess if you follow this guys defense of MR, then the assumption is that Pelini underachieved? I always felt that Bo was about par for the course and that the Husker fan base was out of control with their expectations. Pelini pretty much beat who he was supposed to beat and lost to some of the better teams.

The Husker program hasn’t been elite since the mid-nineties. If Husket fan is saying that we know we are about 10-4, but we want to do it with a nice guy instead of an asshole, then that’s fair, but if they think that Mike Riley is going to do anything to improve their overall standing in the college football pecking order they are seriously delusional and setting themselves up for serious disappointment.

Exactly. There’s a handful of programs that contend for national championships on an annual basis. Nebraska isn’t one of them. And even if it were, would Riley keep them at that level? He never won a conference championship in Corvallis. It’s going to be fun to see Harbaugh and Urban Meyer run circles around their asses

The Husker program hasn’t been elite since the mid-nineties. If Husket fan is saying that we know we are about 10-4, but we want to do it with a nice guy instead of an asshole, then that’s fair, but if they think that Mike Riley is going to do anything to improve their overall standing in the college football pecking order they are seriously delusional and setting themselves up for serious disappointment.

That’s the crux of it. They have been good but mostly irrelevant since the 90s. They’re waiting for a reincarnation of Osborne. Sad fan base that is living in the past; now they’re relegated to typical Riley hope for the future. That’s why we write “those poor bastards”…

I spent some time on a Nebraska site. They seem to love talking about their facilities and tradition. I was like cool, but you guys haven’t really been relevant since the 90s, and OSU has been to a BCS game more recently than Nebraska. They just then take photos of their facilities. Fans don’t seem to understand the ebb and flow. The cycle. I’d say OSU is up and coming under Andersen, and Nebraska is a program in decline. History means very little. it’s interesting and can be used for persuasion, but it doesn’t mean much. Thought should be a Bell Curve, with the top of the curve representing living in the moment. Future and past should be the outliers on each side. Nebraska fan seems to be living way on the left. Almost an inverted Bell Curve…

“That’s the crux of it. They have been good but mostly irrelevant since the 90s. They’re waiting for a reincarnation of Osborne. Sad fan base that is living in the past; now they’re relegated to typical Riley hope for the future. That’s why we write “those poor bastards”…”

Change Tom Osborne to Don James, Riley for any previous or current head coach (Peterson) and you have the delusional husky fan base as well.

“I expect the teams to become softer the longer Riley is there.”…EXACTLY!

Those poor bastards. It will be so predictable to see them first explain losses and then begin to abandon ship.
How long will the anti-Bo persona keep Riley employed? I’m still in the less than 4 years camp.

It might take longer than 2 years for the influx of false starts, holding, and general epic fail. Hell, I think it was 5 years before we saw our first backwards punt (2007? at Louisville). Once Pelini’s players have passed thru the system it will start to unravel. However they can expect clock management and special teams problems from game 1. Those things will never change. I’ll be shocked if Riley is still there after 5 years. The downward trend will start soon. They may be good for the next 2 years but eventually it will all come full circle. Lincoln won’t put up with the shit Corvallis did for that long (12 years). They expect to at least win conference championships. RiLLLLey will never do that.

From a practical standpoint, I don’t think Riley’s timing is that great either. I believe starting in 2016, they start playing a nine game conference schedule, now the league might be weaker (not a given), but Nebraska will be scheduling one less patsy in the non-conference, they had their share of lower division teams in the past when they played four non-con games.

got a tip to check out jack Jones twittet account. he’s posted a Beav pic and later says 5*recruit coming. might be the first big get of 2016 for the new regime? rivals has him as a 4*. listed as a WR bt also plays DB.

You are correct. We don’t seem to have suffered because Nikegon lost the national championship. And that did seem to be the major premise of Mb’s existence for a while… without any explanation other than… ahem… inflated expectations.

I’m not following….is he putting down Gary Andersen? I don’t think any of us expect 10 wins next season, it’s a process. I don’t have any “inflated expectations”, but I expect a better Beaver football program 3 or 4 years down the road.

Multiple posts about how they will be so glad to not “have stupid mental mistakes, like false starts” and finally have a “disciplined O-line that does not play back other heels, but is in the attack mode.”

Haha! You should have kicked the tires before buying, but thanks for solving our problem Huskers.